© 2025 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

WATCH: SpaceX Rocket Explodes In Attempt To Land On A Barge

Members of the media setup remote cameras for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Saturday.
Bill Ingalls
/
AP

Space is hard.

We were reminded of that yesterday when SpaceX tried to land a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific.

If you remember, SpaceX made history when another Falcon 9 successfully launched a satellite into orbit and then navigated back down to Earth, landing safely on solid ground.

SpaceX had tried once before to land a rocket on a platform in the ocean but that failed pretty spectacularly.

On Sunday, the Falcon 9 delivered a satellite into orbit and it came super close to sticking the landing on water. Here's video:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk explained what happened and added a bit of humor:

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: January 18, 2016 at 11:00 PM CST
An earlier version of this post said that SpaceX had tried to land a rocket on a platform in the ocean once before. In fact, this was SpaceX's third attempt.
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
KCUR prides ourselves on bringing local journalism to the public without a paywall — ever.

Our reporting will always be free for you to read. But it's not free to produce.

As a nonprofit, we rely on your donations to keep operating and trying new things. If you value our work, consider becoming a member.